I was caught off guard the other night when my wife visited my library and pulled a chunky looking paperback from the shelves.
"Have you read this?" she asked with a knowing look on her face.
It was Dave Eggers' trendy confessional, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
Through gritted teeth I admitted that I had not, leaving my wife free to claim the title of the house's Eggers Expert.
The unfortunate episode got me thinking about all the books I should have read and have not quite got around to finishing.
I have read a few classics in my time — the complete works of Jane Austen, Middlemarch by George Eliot , Trollope's Barchester Towers, and Conrad's Nostromo, but I'm afraid there are still quite a few gaps in my literary armour.
So I have resolved to read 10 great works which have remained on my shelves for far too long without being enjoyed.
My task, now that I have chosen to accept it, is to read the following:

1. On The Road by Jack Kerouac, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary.
2. Ulysses by James Joyce.
3. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
4. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman — I have read the first two instalments of His Dark Materials but why not the third?
5. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh — I've only read the first 200 pages.
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Love in the Time of Cholera.
8. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.
9. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
10. Possession by AS Byatt — started but definitely not finished.

Once I have completed these titles I shall be able to cite the list in my defence next time someone pulls a book at random from the shelves and asks me if
I have read it.
With big beasts like Ulysses involved, it would be foolish to set a deadline.
What is the best — and worst — "classic" you have ever read? Do let me know.